1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an unloader for a tire curing machine, which transports a cured tire after having been cured in a tire curing machine from the tire curing machine to a post-cure inflator for air-cooling the tire.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a heretofore known unloader for a tire curing machine, a cured tire is made to fall from a high position, then it is made to move on rollers of an inclined conveyor by the weight of the tire, and it is made to stop at a center position of a post-cure inflator (hereinafter abbreviated as PCI) by making it butt against a stopper provided in the PCI. Thereafter, the tire is gripped by the PCI to carry out the inflation work. However, the above-mentioned unloader in the prior art had a disadvantage that the centering of the tire with respect to the PCI could not always be done with good precision.
Therefore, previously the inventors of this invention proposed an unloader for a tire curing machine of the type that a vertical rotary shaft is disposed between the tire curing machine and a post-cure inflator and connected to a main body of the tire curing machine, an arm is mounted on the rotary shaft so as to be movable vertically along the rotary shaft and swingable about the axis of the rotary shaft between a center position of a metal mold of the tire curing machine and a center position of a post-cure inflator ring of the post-cure inflator, and a tire gripping device having expansible and contractible chuck claws for gripping a bead portion of a cured tire is mounted at the tip end portion of the arm.
In the last-mentioned unloader for a tire curing machine, the inner circumferential portion of the cured tire is gripped by moving the chuck claws in the outward directions along guide slots provided in a chuck main body with the aid of an expansion or contraction effect of a hydraulic cylinder. However, at this moment, since the inner circumferential portion of the cured tire is in tight contact with an inner circumferential surface of a bladder, it was difficult to smoothly insert the chuck claws between the cured tire and the bladder without damaging either one of them.